Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

The Race to Destruction
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
301
made by the CIA well into 1949 and were supported by foreign
observers. Subsequent intelligence estimates ‘‘exaggerated Soviet
capabilities and intentions to such a great extent,” he notes, “that it is
surprising that anyone took them seriously.” In fact, it is not surprising
when one considers their utility in justifying US policies that were
motivated on quite different grounds but justified in these terms; see
section 5, below. Evangelista’s study indicates that even in numerical
terms, Western forces matched those of the Soviet Union in Europe,
putting aside their much higher cohesion and morale, technical level and
economic base, and the fact that Soviet forces were engaged in such
tasks as reconstruction of large areas devastated by the German attack,
which had concentrated the bulk of its fury on the Eastern front. 48
We forget much too easily that “until mid-1944, almost 95% of all
Nazi ground forces were engaged on the Eastern Front, where Germany
suffered 10 million of its total 13.6 [million] casualties; and that 50
Soviet citizens died for every one American. Even after 40 years, no
‘historical truth’ is more important in Soviet minds,” Stephen Cohen
observes, however insignificant all this may seem to American
commentators who urge us to dismiss “the pretense that the Soviet
Union helped us to liberate Europe” and the idea that “we could not
have won the war without the help of the Soviet Union.” 49
In short, fear of a Soviet attack on Western Europe was not a
dominant concern. At some level, Western European planners must
recognize this. Western Europe has an economy far larger than that of
the Soviet bloc, a much higher technical and educational level, a
population of comparable size and much greater internal cohesion. If
they really took the Soviet threat seriously, they could build a military
system that would overwhelm that of the USSR. The fact that they do
not is not without significance.